7 November 2012 - QA 2

How to deal with righteousness without becoming biased? I tend to withdraw myself if I am wrong and that limits my ability to forgive and forget.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

All those who get angry do so on the basis of righteousness only. But their idea of righteousness is very limited. All types of things happen in this world, you need patience.

Wanting only righteousness, and saying, ‘I want to be right and I want everybody to be right, right now', is not possible.

Wanting everyone to be right is okay, but you need to give them that long rope. Have righteousness with patience, then anger will not take over.

Otherwise when you say, ‘I am righteous', and you demand, 'I want this', then anger comes, and when anger comes, you lose your righteousness as well. If you are angry, it is as bad as someone doing something wrong.

Suppose someone does not clean this place and it is all dirty. You come here and you get angry. Now that person has made a mistake, has not cleaned it, that is correct. But you getting so upset and yelling and shouting about it is another mistake.

Two mistakes cannot make one mistake right. So if someone does something wrong, patiently tell them once, twice, thrice, and educate them.

You need enormous patience to be an educator. School teachers these days have this challenge. They tell the children 10 times but still they do not listen. The children have an attention deficiency syndrome. Children do not attend to it. So patience is required.

Patience is a virtue. It is one of the six wealths: Sham (calmness or quietude of mind), Dama (self-control or restraint), Uparati (self-withdrawal from worldly objects), Titiksha (power of endurance), Shraddha(faith) and Samadhana (equanimity or one-pointedness of the mind).Samadhana is to have that contentment and patience. It is absolutely essential.